Not 1 But 2 Blasts at Disneyland, OC Prosecutors Say

So says the Orange County District Attorney's office in its prosecution of employee and suspect Christian Barnes, 22. The previously unknown water-bottle explosion happened ...

... about an hour and a half before the one that we all know about, the one that rocked Disneyland's world and prompted two hours of evacuations at Mickey's Toontown.

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The mini-explosions are described in a DA's statement:

Sometime after 4 p.m., a female employee went to relieve the defendant from his shift at a vending cart outside of Toontown. Barnes is accused of opening the vending cart, at which time the first water bottle containing dry ice exploded.

The defendant is accused of then taking the second water bottle from the cart and walking away toward the employee break room. While passing through Toontown, Barnes is accused of placing the second water bottle containing dry ice in a trash can. He is accused of then leaving the immediate area.

Several minutes later, a custodian was removing trash bags from trash cans in Toontown and removed the bag containing the destructive device. The custodian put the bag on the ground and walked a short distance to clear another trash can. While the trash bag was on the ground, the water bottle exploded.

Barnes / OC Weekly

The 'splosion heard around the world was reported shortly before 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, police told us. Toontown was evacuated for about two hours, but cops quickly realized what kind of device they were dealing with, one that's fairly harmless.

An Anaheim police spokesman described to us how the "bomb" works: Simply put dry ice into a water bottle and close the lid: The dry ice expands until the bottle fails and explodes. The dry ice's foggy, smoky effect then apparently scares people.

Dennis Romero is an L.A. Weekly staff writer. He formerly worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian and, as a young stringer, the New York Times.